Ever since Tony Hawk's Pro Skater hit the scene, it seems like extreme sports titles have decreased dramatically; the Pro Skater series was the dominant title and everybody seemed to just accept that. Whenever there's a new title in the genre it takes many of Tony's characteristics, no matter what extreme sport it may be. We've seen it with Snowboarding, BMX and now with Midway's new extreme dirt-bike game, Freestyle MetalX. The only question is, can it fly with the Hawk, or will it take a nosedive?

Right when you boot it up, you see your typical developer and producers logos (one of which changes now and then), followed by footage of various dirt-biking stunts set to a Motley Crue song. The menus are easy to navigate and get where you want quickly and include things in the background to watch and look at, making the presentation decent, but nothing too special.

The gameplay is actually quite good and despite its presentation it isn't exactly an arcade-like game. The feel of the dirt bikes is more simulation and while you are in the air you cannot spin your bike around 20 times in a span of five seconds. You can't pop right into a wheelie or a stoppie; things feel fairly realistic. Turning while sitting at a complete stand-still is also impossible, unless you're balancing on one wheel, which can cause some problems if you're stuck against a wall, making it difficult at times to get out.

Pulling off moves feels pretty good, they don't happen too fast although they're maybe even sometimes too slow. Most moves require combinations on the D-Pad or analog stick plus one of the stunt buttons (one stunt button and one modifier). During a stunt, pushing the modifier button will add more to the trick; for instance, if you pull off a Superman stunt (which has your rider hanging on to the handle bars and sticking his legs out behind him), you can push the modifier button plus a direction to have your rider pull off one hand, or even both.

Like every other extreme sports title, the key to high points is combos. Landing a big move in a wheelie or stoppie will continue your combo and you can continue riding this way until you reach another ramp and do a move from there. Keep this up long enough and you'll rack up some huge points. Don't worry about falling either, because balancing while in a manual is very easy, even when you lose your balance you don't really fall off, you just touch the other wheel down. You can pretty much sit in the same spot doing a wheelie for quite a while and rack up some points that way if you want.

Special moves are here as well, but they are kept realistic. Unlike Tony Hawk, there isn't exactly a "special" bar that stays charged up, waiting for you to pull off a special move. Here you either pull off a huge move or link moves together with a combo and doing this charges up a bar with a green colour. When it reaches the top it turns red and that's when it's time to pull off your moves. This bar is actually called the Radometer and when it's full, you've entered "Super Rad" mode and you feel so good about yourself you can pull off any move in the world - or at least you feel like you can. I know you're thinking that this Radometer sounds just like any other special bar in extreme sports titles but there's a rather nasty catch. As soon as you touch down with your motorbike the radometer begins to empty at a rather quick pace; about three seconds on the ground will cause your radometer to empty. This makes pulling off the big moves rather difficult if you don't land right in front of a ramp to get the air, or are not in the air already. You may find yourself riding around in a wheelie or stoppie (also called a manual) to keep your meter full until you reach a ramp and by the time you get to one you usually won't have enough speed to pull off the move. There are other little things to do on your bike, such as burnouts, holding the clutch, spinning in donuts, many of which give you speed boosts, which you can actually charge in the air sometimes and doing this may help you get to a ramp quicker to pull off your move in time.

Don't worry if you're not too good at the extreme sports genre, as Freestyle MetalX includes a training mode that you must pass before you can advance to the career mode. The controls and moves are described to you by a female voice, which is, thankfully, not the same voice that is used for the rest of the girls. I'd listen to her when she tells you what to do before the stunt, because it's hard to hear and understand her while you're doing the actual stunt. She tells you what to do less than a second before you have a chance to do it, so sometimes it takes a few tries.

Your biking adventure takes place on one huge map with various locations on it, including a barnyard, snowfield, busy town area and more. Each area is extremely large with a lot of cool places to go and do some stunts, for example in the barnyard alone is a bull pin, a river to jump, a waterfall and a huge hill area to get some major air in, complete with windmills. Not only are these areas huge but they are all connected; this means you can ride from one area to another in one transition without going out to a menu. If you want to save time you can just leave and go to another one but this is a welcome addition, especially for those who just like to ride around and have fun.

The real world riders are not available from the start, they are unlocked by beating them in their respective locations. Instead, you choose from a group of odd looking fictional characters. These include your typical psycho and of course the big-breasted blonde in a tight shirt. The first person I selected was a rider in a ninja outfit (although he still wears a helmet), which I selected almost immediately after seeing him.

You can play each area five different ways in both freeride and career mode. First is the Tony Hawk like Challenge mode. Scattered throughout each area around seven challenges await you and if you aren't sure what to do, identical looking girls in bikinis will be happy to explain the goal to you and toss a bunch of really lame sexual innuendos at you. If you already know the goal you can go ahead and just do it, although talking to the ladies will set your bike up in a really good position for the goal. Some goals are pretty easy while others are not; they range from doing actual stunts, like jumping over a barn while doing a Superman, to other odd things. One has you survive in a bull pen for 30 seconds, while another has you get a cat out of a tree! The best goals are pulling off great stunts while doing a cool looking move, another example of this is jumping off a roof and through a helicopter in midair.

In challenge mode there is no time limit until you enter certain goals, but you can become hospitalised if you crash too much. You hear your heart start to beat faster and then your biker starts to glow slightly, then your final crash ends the level and sends you to the hospital, via text. You can easily just go back into the game and finish what you were doing though.

Other game modes include freeride, for those who just like to ride around and do whatever they want. Story oriented modes include Big Air competitions, Freestyle competitions and even races, which are one on one and take you through the levels while riding across checkpoints. Each level has a champion who you can challenge and beating them will give you not only their character to select, but their bike and some cash as well. Cash is very important, as it unlocks other levels, bikes and upgrades. Beating every challenge isn't needed to unlock levels, especially since each area is literally littered with cash and other pick ups; every turn you make you can see floating cash, speed boosts, stunt boosts, videos, posters, and tickets.

These tickets are used to enter the Daredevil Course. This is a place to earn cash and do some of the coolest stunts in the game, such as bus jumping, car stack hopping, loop-de-loops, ring of fire and wall of death. Each of these can be modified by adding to, or subtracting from, the danger. For example, with bus jumping you can add or remove buses from the line-up, however, you most likely will not be able to jump the full line until you get a better bike. Another mini-game included is Human Darts. Sounds pretty fun, doesn't it? It is, for a little while at least, but it does have a cool idea and set-up. The object has you ride towards a huge area below you, that looks like a 3D dartboard and as you get near the edge, you launch your rider off the bike and hope he lands on a high scoring area. To make things worse there are spinning spike balls all around the area, floating around various power ups in the air.

While playing the game you can choose to listen to the game's soundtrack, which includes bands like Motley Crue, Motor Head, Megadeth, Twisted Sister, and others. This can be turned off, or tracks can be removed from the line-up but you can't preview the tracks in the Juke Box menu to tell if you want to remove them or not, which is a little annoying.

Freestyle MetalX is a welcome addition to the extreme sports line-up and might actually give Tony Hawk a run for its money if discovered by enough gamers. This is the best dirt-biking game I've played; huge air, cool tricks, fun challenges, multiple mini-games and its own awesome style and presentation make Freestyle MetalX a very good extreme sports title that's worth purchasing if you're a big fan of extreme sports or dirt-biking. If you're not, go ahead and try renting it - you never know, you might just like it.

Reviewed by Chris Martin for AceGamez (All Rights Reserved).